This is the problem with a country of numbers like India; the numbers also become problematic, thereby adding to the number of problems.

I know such silly long-winding fatuous sentences are the last thing in the world you would want to grapple with, especially considering the fact that the long weekend is about to end and you have to get back to work or college.

The point is there are many issues that hold us back from moving forward among the comity of nations. Ask yourself why is it that there has been only one Abhinav Bindra in this country. Perhaps, his parents opted for family planning or something.

No, this is not the time for levity. The time now is for this column to get to the crux. And that is, the 62 problems (don’t ask me why 62) that we, as a nation, have to resolve so that for the next Independence Day we may have different issues to ponder over.

So here goes my 62:

1. We have to settle straightaway whether the next Independence Day is the 62nd or 63rd. Convene Parliament or summon the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court or discuss it at Visu’s Arattai Arangam. Get it resolved. Else, the consequences will be heavy: I may have to repeat this article next year.

2. Cancel all national holidays for important festivals and functions. This has to be done on a war-footing to stop the TV channels from killing us  with their programmes that have been structured carefully to contain not even a molecule of creativity. Okay, Solomon Pap-aiya and others will be out of work. But that is a small price to pay for a national cause.

3. On the subject of TV, the voice-over which shouts, India Tholaikatchigalil Mudhal Muraiyaga, has to be quickly identified and sedated and sent to a place where human beings don’t live. This again is a national service.

4. The software that allows TV news channels to ceaselessly scroll ‘Breaking News’ has to be confiscated forthwith. God give us back the Doordarshan’s 9 ‘o’ clock monotones, even though they were essentially radio news in which you also got to see the news reader.

5. Get Sonia Gandhi to improve her accent. Hers is a very cruel way to kill a sweet language. If you speak Italian the way she speaks Hindi, you will be smothered to death with pizza dough.

6. On the subject of language, get the Court to pass a decree banning Sukhvinder Singh and Udit Narayan from even attempting to hum a Tamil song.

7. Order Ravi Shastri to acquire a new thesaurus to help find alternatives to ‘it went like a trace of bullet’ and ‘it doesn’t matter how they come as long as they come’.

8. Get a promise from Rajnikanth that he will no longer speak at public functions. And Sathyaraj has to be gagged even if that means suturing his.

9. Place a classified ad seeking applicants for a Home Minister. It doesn’t matter even if Al-Qaeda recruits apply. For, they cannot possibly be worse than Shivraj Patil.

10. Tamil cinema actors and artistes have to be strictly ordered to describe their new movies without ever resorting to ‘it’s a different subject or concept’. Failing which, they have to be asked to watch Test Matches involving Bangladesh.

11. Reality dance shows should invite capital punishment to all concerned —— participants, judges, viewers, TV channels, TV manufacturers and even the man who invented TV (I know he is dead. But he should be killed again, if it comes to that).

12. Arundhathi Roy, if she pens essays that run beyond three A-4 sheets, should be made to write imposition for 300 pages the names of George Bush and Condoleezza Rice without showing any change in her BP reading.

13. All those forwarding smses saying ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’ or ‘Feel Proud to be an Indian’ every time, say, after India beats Kenya in cricket or Tendulkar scores fours off successive balls will invite punishment under National Security Act.

14. Lalu Prasad Yadav should be accorded all the respect and reverence that are due to a regional clown.

15. Award Bharath Rathna to T Rajendher if he vows to make films never again.

16. Award one more Bharath Rathna to T Rajendher if agrees to shave his beard and asks Simbu to shut up.

17. The nation should be explained as to why lawyers and judges should continue to wear gowns and capes that make them look like badly dressed transvestites. And doctors must prove that they are not surrogate engineers and stop prescribing complicated CT scans and MRIs even to the person dropping in to provide telephone connection.

18. Put a moratorium on the usage of Thirukural in the budget speech of P Chidambaram. Otherwise, this blessed nation will start thinking Thrivallur to be the Reserve Bank Governor.

19. Any hero claiming that he has got a six-pack abs should be debarred from filmdom and compulsorily be enrolled in the Army as Lance Naik.

20. Rahul Gandhi is no Prime Minister material. Those who think that he is one must immediately be told to surrender their driving licence. Getting them to drive vehicles is a palpable crime against society.

21. Newspapers must stop publishing photos of men and women purportedly taken at parties. Failing which, the newspapers must appoint Vijay Mallay as their Editor.

22. The country must understand that Olympics will never attract youngsters (and motivate them to win medals) as long as Doordarshan telecasts the events here. DD commentary must carry statutory warning for its potential to cause multiple sclerosis or any other disease that possibly has no cure.

23. Appoint translator to translate into Tamil whenever Kamal speaks in Tamil. This should be done as a social service.

24. Stop P Vasu from watching any more Malayalam movies.

25. The nation should pardon Namitha’s dress sense.

26. Tare Zameen Par is only a film. Not a medical treatise on dyslexia. Having said that dyslexics, who see numbers and letters interchanged, need patience and sympathetic handling. A quick test for you: If you see the accompanying number to be 26, and not as 62 (which will signal the end of the list that I had started with), I am sorry to say, you may be a dyslexic.

Don’t read any further. The letters will start jumping around.

See you next year, and the test for you then will be to identify, what else, 63. Or will it be 64?

(This is the column I wrote around last year’s Independence Day)

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Anyway, cricket is indeed revolutionised if you manage to expand the idea of cricket revolution to include some increase in Ravi Shastri’s vocabulary. Now there is decidedly more ammunition to his verbal arsenal, and it involves dramatic adjectives like ‘DLF’, ‘Citi’.
As the IPL’s sponsors’ list gets bigger, Ravi Shastri’s language is only going to become bigger. And cricket can be deemed to be moving in the right direction when Shastri is stopped from unleashing his ‘went like a tracer bullet’ stuff.

The IPL is also the fitting answer to all those carping critics who never fail to shout that there is too much of cricket, which makes us to think that there may be more critics shouting that there is more cricket than there is actually more cricket. If you have any problem in comprehending the previous sentence, you have every right to move on to the next paragraph.

With the IPL it is less about cricket and more about everything else that is not about cricket and that includes Ajith Agarkar. Just consider this: You see a batsman hitting a monstrous six and they immediately show you the visual of Shilpa Shetty jumping up and down in her seat animatedly in a simulation of emotion that is otherwise possible for others only when their backsides are literally on fire. And when they show a close-up of the Shetty girl, only those not watching the telecast will let their thoughts still lingered on cricket.

Anyway, if they had wanted your mind to remain focussed on the game they would not have trained the cameras on Shilpa in the first place, instead they would have let you ogle at, say, John Buchanan, fingering his laptop with passion.

The thing about Shilpa is that her knowledge and understanding of the game can be easily filled on the back of 25p postal stamp with some room to spare. You don’t have to believe me. Just ask Shilpa what’s the score, she will break out into teasing titters as if you had just recounted to her a spectacular comic line from Woody Allen’s new movie. I don’t blame Shilpa. All actresses do this all the time. They will giggle and grin even when they are crying. It is fair to surmise that in Bollywood, they don’t let you face the camera unless you have smiled yourself silly in every conceivable occasion including funerals and famines.

Another of Bollywood’s fetish undoubtedly is hugging, a practice that I strongly suspect to be the reason for Kings XI Punjab exit much before the semi-finals of the tournament this year. Whoever had the brainwave to let Preity Zinta play the important role of supporting the team from the sidelines surely will not have any worries about getting through the IIM entrance exams. For simply, he or she does not possess the intelligence to even pass the kindergarten class.

There are any number of ways of enthusing a cricket team, like clapping, whistling, shouting encouragements or even jumping up and down with backside on fire like Shilpa. But for some reasons that are difficult to explain in rational terms Preity Zinta resorted to a plan that involved happily hugging all the players in the dugout whenever the team’s batsmen hit a sixer or four. Now if there is a chance of Preity hugging you, will you stay in the middle playing or begin to queue up in front of her? I fully understand why Punjab batsmen were in a hurry to get out. Somebody like Sreesanth even went to the extent of being injured for most of the part of the tournament and staying inside the dugout just to boost the morale of the team by taking on the responsibility of helping Preity Zinta by being the recipient of her embrace.

See, the last few paragraphs have been entirely about Preity, Shilpa and Bollywood. And that is the beauty of the IPL.

And Lalit Modi, the man who has single-handedly taken on the onerous task of changing the face of cricket from being a mere game that people were passionate about to a mass commercial product which everyone flees away from, promises more innovations in the coming IPL seasons. When Modi speaks you better listen to it carefully, especially because his accent is generally difficult to pick.

Talking of innovations, the strategy breaks, which have been introduced this year, could certainly be tweaked. Already the sponsors, for whose benefit the whole extravaganza has been got up, are complaining that it is not working.

There is actually room for Modi to go the whole hog and hold the cricket in the 10-minute strategy break, while leaving the rest of match time to be filled with TV commercials. This can be a double whammy. One, it can satisfy the sponsors, and two, it can also keep the real cricket enthusiasts happy as they will have less of Ravi Shastri and Rameez Raja in the commentary box.

The 10-minute game can be a four over per side, with the batting team being assumed to play from the 16th over with the score reading 120 for two or some number that is deemed par. Of course, this rule will not apply to the Kolkata Knight Riders, who in a 16-over match can be counted to be all out by the 12th.

Modi can also lure sponsors for dropped catches (‘that is a Sathyam moment of failure’) and dubious run out claims (‘It is an Enron moment of shame’). Quite simply, the possibilities are endless and everyone has already started to wait for the next season of the IPL.

But Modi should know cricket is a game of inviolable traditions. In other words, Preity and Shilpa should stay. At the maximum, he can add Katerina.

(This is my column for the publication this week)

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.